The Center as a Place for Creative Collaboration
Note: I wrote this on November 10th, 2005, from notes I made in June of that same year, outlining the goals and future directions of the Center for Creative Media. These notes, along with the ones which formed the foundation of the strategic planning guide for the Department of Communication Studies at Hilbert, represent my thoughts that I have followed while working to make both the Center and the Department places where students can excel. Steve Jackson, 25 February 2006
Cheri White, a Communication Studies major, uses a nonlinear editor equipped with Final Cut Pro to edit a video.
November 10th, 2004 -The Center for Creative Media will be a lot more than just a space filled with technology. While a computer lab is simply a place where students can use computers that they might not own themselves, The Center for Creative Media will be a Center for student explorations into the communication arts. The main way this will be expressed is by making the Center a place where students may collaborate in artistic expession using the most modern equipment that Hilbert College can afford, with the best practitioners of the Communication Arts Hilbert can afford to attract. To do this, the Center must set and meet long term strategic goals, with a clear understanding of the mistakes that often come from creating a "Center" as a partially independent entity from a parent academic body.

The first goal of the Center is to support the Department of Communication Studies meet its mission of educating students in modern communicatiuon techniques. To do this, the Center must be ready with the hardware and the software needed to create communication content in a wide variety of mediums. No matter what tasks the Center takes on in the future, this goal must always be first.

The second goal of the Center is to offer the students of Hilbert College a place to congregate where creative expression, excellence, collaborative spirit, and intellectual inquiry are nutured. To often on modern academic campuses the concept of place is lost in rush to be a multi-functional member of the community, and the students 'ownership of place' is never established. Students can become strangers in their own college as the facilities are used to support non-academic missions. To succeed in being a student place, the Center will always strive to provide comfortable surrounding for student use, open for as many hours as possible, and to make access to equipment and space as easy as possible. The Center exists for the students.
Communication Studies Students in early 2005. While the Center is used mostly by students in this major, nearly every major on campus works has representatives each semester in the Center. Starting with 3 students in 2004, Communication Studies had 15 students by Spring 2005, 25 in Fall of 2005, and nearly 30 in Spring 2006. Likewise, the Center for Creative Media served nearly 1000 student requests for service in 2005.
Al Leight uses a boom pole to safely record waterfall sound for the documentary "100 Years of History."
The third goal of the Center is to encourage students to become citizens of their communities by supporting the creation of artistics and documentary work that targets the Western New York region. While this goal comes from the educational mission statement of the Department of Communication Studies, it is further amplified by the Center as a place for student creative and education efforts. Students will be encouraged by Center staff to 'think large, act small.' In other words, students should focuse the lense of their modern creative equipment on their own communities in order to better understand not only the methods and art of media creation, but the dimensions of the society they live in.

The forth goal of the Center is best expressed by the motto of the Department of Communication Studies: Work Hard, Have Fun, Learn Everyday. The Center is designed to be used, not to be cached for some future date. Students should be encouraged to make the most use of the Center that they can. A student enrolled in Communication Studies classes who has the ability to use a piece of a equipment is welcome to make use of the equipment even for projects outside of the classroom experience.